Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

He "blazed the way for a generation of bloggers". He "became a legend Washington journalists still worship, and set a standard few can meet". He was, of course, I. F. Stone and Vanity Fair.com presents a very fulsome tribute to his legacy titled "I. F. Stone's Mighty Pen". Unsurprisingly, it was penned by Christopher Hitchens, the Washington journalist who has inherited Stone's mantle and is now setting a standard few can meet. Hitchens is the classic example of what's being called in some new media circles "the independent journalist as brand". A title he would frown upon, no doubt.

But not every hack is as talented as Hitchens. True, but that's where the mastery of niches come into play. Take Rick Waghorn. The former Evening News soccer corr has turned his passion for Norwich City into a blog and a business. Waghorn is the poster child of independent journalism this week and in "A journalist's guide to going it alone", Shane Richmond at the Telegraph provides the story behind the story.

Although Waghorn is ploughing a narrow furrow, the momentum is with him for the fact is that news is not just daily anymore, and neither is it bound to paper. News is continuous and the customers are flocking online, which means that independent journalists can exploit the trend, but they'll need to learn how to manage traffic and advertising and not erode their credibility by whoring for clicks. Matt Marshall and Michael Bazeley seem to have figured out what needs to be done. The two left the San Jose Mercury News to set up VentureBeat, which covers venture capital start-ups in Silicon Valley. This was the subject of the SiliconBeat blog they used to write for the Mercury News website. Interestingly, Marshall and Bazeley have done a syndication deal with their former employer to run VentureBeat in place of their old SiliconBeat. This means that the two get a cut of the site's ad revenue. Sweet.

Of course, former Business 2.0 staffer Om Malik went down this road some time ago. And successfully, too. Wonder what he makes of the new Business 2.0 strategy of paying staffers to blog and rewarding them on the basis of traffic? Hmmm. Tomorrow, we round out the week's look at the changing face of new journalism with a peek at what's going on at Victoria Plaza on Buckingham Palace Road, close to Whitehall and Westminster, where one newspaper is attempting to make the very painful transition from print to 24/7 news.